Ashcroft v. Abasi

WHAT HAPPENED: Plaintiffs were detained at Guantanamo Bay following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Plaintiffs assert that they were detained illegally and without sufficient evidence warranting their detention, and are suing the government officials they believe are responsible for their detention.

WHY IS THIS BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT: Well, for starters, the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay was a clusterfuck from the beginning. In the years that followed 2001, George Bush and friends were routinely in front of the Supreme Court trying to justify detaining suspected terrorists without Due Process. In every case, the Supreme Court found in favor of the detainees, stating that the foreign terrorists are not entitled to the full Due Process protections entitled to citizens, but they are entitled to something. This case takes a different angle than those cases, as these Plaintiffs are not seeking criminal constitutional rights, but are instead looking for civil damages as a result of those actions, as the Plaintiffs argue that the government officials in question knew what they were doing was wrong and detained the Plaintiffs anyway.

WHAT ARE THE RAMIFICATIONS – Suing the government is tough sledding, because the deck is stacked against you in the form of qualified and sovereign immunity. In all cases, the government cannot be sued unless it consents to be sued, and as you can imagine, the government does not like to be sued that often. For these defendants to be found civilly liable for their actions, the Plaintiffs have to prove a fairly high burden of showing that the Defendants knowingly violated their Constitutional rights and that the general rules relating to false arrest and imprisonment should apply to this fairly unique situation. Should the Plaintiffs’ claims succeed, it could open the door for similar lawsuits against high government officials related to the War on Terror, or HYPOTHETICALLY, a certain order by the President that knowingly bent Constitutional rights and inconvenienced a large group of foreign citizens in the name of protecting Americans from terrorists.

ROOT FOR ASHCROFT IF: you’re down with early 2000s nostalgia, like Brittany Spears, foam mesh trucker hats, and widespread paranoia about Middle East terrorism.

ROOT FOR ABASI IF: you watched that one episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about Guantanamo Bay and now you feel like an expert.